Memory colors are colors that are associated by humans with familiar objects. These colors are of prime importance in video imaging systems, as human perception of these colors is more sensitive due to the prior knowledge of the color. The most important of memory colors are mainly human skin-tones, the grass-green and the sky-blue colors. The accurate representation and if needed enhancement of these memory colors, increases the natural feel of the video image. This invention is a video processing architecture capable of the independent processing and control of the three outlined memory colors, in addition to the traditional processing usually associated with video systems. The color processing architecture is applied in the color appearance model CIECAMO2 with the objective of enhancing the color appearance in the video system, while paying attention to the perception of the colors. Color manipulation has the potential of altering some other video image attributes, such as image brightness and color hues. The choice of color space is crucial, as it needs to have lines of constant hues across other dimensions such as color saturation and luminance.
The almost orthogonal separation between the color attributes such as hue and saturation and luminance in the CIECAMO2 color space, allows more independent control on the color attributes when compared with traditional video processing domains such as YCbCr. Moreover, the adaptation of the CIECAMO2 characteristics to the human perception of colors, implies that when some color attributes are changes, that change will be perceived by the human eye in a similar proportion.